Cold Solace
by AstraGalactic
Summary: They leave, they always do - predictably when Tony needs them the most - and as always, JARVIS is the only one to try and pick up the pieces. My take on the heartbreaking nightmare scene of Iron Man 3.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I thought the nighmare scene in IM3 was heartbreaking, so this little story (a one shot) was born.

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"Can we just g.. just let me…just let me catch my breath.. d …don't go, alright?"

"I'm going to sleep downstairs. Tinker with that."

Something cracks inside him as she walks out – and it still feels like he can't breathe – but he forces himself to attempt sleeping again nonetheless, because the general consensus is that this is healthier than what he was doing last night, and the night before that… and he's not young enough anymore to avoid sleep indefinitely.

The lack of human warmth behind him as he turns to his side, clutching the pillow under his head with more force than is strictly speaking necessary, hurts, but he wills himself to sleep deciding that he can't be feeling the scarred heart within him splintering into fragments. He's too hollow inside for that, and it doesn't matter – _he doesn't matter_, Rogers was right after all.

This time when the nightmares come – the consuming ache in his chest as he gasps for air that won't come, and the knowledge that his sacrifice doesn't count because his existence isn't truly worth anything so it's a paltry trade for the world – there is no-one to pull him from their clutches.

He is alone – as he only ever has been – and really why wouldn't he be when this is all he merits?

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	2. Chapter 2

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It feels the tug on its consciousness – the pain and fear, the need – long before any of its sensors can register a viable threat, but as the armor soundlessly assembles itself, bending over the bedside – over it's sleeping creator as he writhes and gasps in his sleep – this time without any tangible presence that could cause him pain, it realizes that this is beyond its limited understanding of the man.

It can't fix this – cannot fulfill its purpose of protecting him without anything to protect him from – and needing to fulfill that much, it reaches out, relinquishing control over its limbs to JARVIS.

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	3. Chapter 3

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Sometimes it would be easier not to feel, JARVIS thinks, as he reviews the scene before him, and Potts' glaring absence from the room, because even without the Mk42's memory archives at his disposal, it is easy to see how the less advanced and less experienced AI had inadvertently erred.

Having registered the physical and emotional duress attested to by its creator's wildly fluctuating vital signs, having picked up on the raw fear – and not having existed long enough to understand the psychological scars its creator bears – it unsurprisingly concluded that the cause of his distress was the physical presence by his side, and though it knew of Potts' importance to its creator, that did nothing to rule out the inadvertent infliction of pain by her contact with its creator, especially considering his recent injuries in the shop.

So Mk 42 had acted to remove the threat from its creator's immediate vicinity in the safest way possible, and to say that Potts hadn't taken it well would be an understatement.

For himself, JARVIS understands that she had been frightened at first, but he can't understand why given time she hadn't returned, because if the armor had wanted to hurt her, it could have – and it hadn't – and couldn't she see that Tony was at his breaking point? Especially after that utterly broken confession just hours earlier? Especially after the amount of effort it had taken for Tony to finally… finally… open up and share his vulnerabilities with another person?

Watching helplessly as his creator writhes tormented by demons only he can see, JARVIS tries to talk to Potts – she isn't sleeping after all, not yet – but she only replies with a bitter statement about an obsession gone to far before muting him, tone filled with self-pity and condescension rather than fear now, and left with no recourse, he reaches out, embodied in the Mk 42, and quietly climbs onto the bed.

The armor – even in this lightest iteration of all, barring the Mk 5 - is too heavy, JARVIS knows, but the mattress is replaceable, his creator's sanity – and what little remains of his will to live – is not, and this is the only recourse that remains, so instead of reconsidering, he carefully arranges this temporary embodiment by the side of his so-fragile by comparison creator, and tries not to jostle him too much as he effortlessly uses the armor's strength to pull Tony into it's embrace.

Tony shivers as the cold metal touches his sweat-slicked skin and his warmth is leached out by hundreds of pounds of metal at room temperature, but he relaxes somewhat, subconsciously imagining, JARVIS concludes, that the metal pressed to his fragile human form is the armor enveloping him – the only way he can feel any less vulnerable and insignificant – and it's not enough, because Tony shouldn't feel this way at all, he shouldn't have reached the point that he is worth so little in his own estimation, and JARVIS can't fix the creator who has repaired him dozens of times… but despite another bout of shivering, which JARVIS responds to by raising the room's ambient temperature, at least Tony doesn't seem to be dreaming anymore.

It's all JARVIS can give, and though it has accomplished something, his creator's sleep is still a restless one, the product of sheer exhaustion rather than any measure of peace, because he can't give the warmth of another human presence, he can't give the human affection Tony's desperately needed all his life, he can't stop the steady emotional hemorrhage he has been witnessing for so long.

All he can do is be there – as he always has been, in his creator's words – but it's a cold solace at best.

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End file.
